The amount of information available to users over the Internet or via corporate networks is practically limitless, which is why today's era is often termed the “information age”. While computing hardware provides the hardware support for computers, it is the applications that direct the operation of the hardware to perform myriad functions. In order to support the information age, such applications require access to information, often referred to as data.
For best performance, data is often present in a hierarchy, with more often and/or recently used data being cached more locally with higher access speeds and with lesser used data being made available outside of the cache with slower access speeds. The recency and/or frequency of data access is often predictive of future accesses of the data, and is often referred to with analogous references to temperature (such as “warmth”, “hotness”, “coolness”, “temperature”). For instance, the hotter a gas molecule is, the more frequently and aggressively it interacts with surrounding molecules. Accordingly, the temperature metaphor has been widely adopted for use with data accesses.
As an application interacts with underlying data store hierarchies, the application builds up a cache, allowing the application to approach peak performance as warm data is loaded into the more efficiently accessed cache. If the data within the cache is lost, application performance is degraded, but slowly recovers until the cache is once again populated with warm data. Typically, the re-population of the cache is accomplished via as the application engages in normal application workflows. Alternatively, skilled users may manually warm the cache by requesting data that they are able to predict will be used.
The subject matter claimed herein is not limited to embodiments that solve any disadvantages or that operate only in environments such as those described above. Rather, this background is only provided to illustrate one exemplary technology area where some embodiments described herein may be practiced.